I had always been a skinny kid, the kind where, if my mother met some neighbor and if the discussion hovered around kids, she would inevitably point at the skinny me and complain of my poor eating habits. I had no problems with this skinny self of mine and this was the only physical state I knew up until the second year of engineering.

During the beginning of second year of engineering, I had joined a gym. Even with an irregular gym schedule, it resulted in some healthy weight gain and increased my metabolism. I had zero knowledge of nutrition that went along with a healthy workout, so I ended up eating more junk food without any regard to the macros contained in my meal. During the second half of this year though, I took up a project that sometimes required working late in the college. Erratic eating timings added to the already bad habits of consuming junk food almost daily resulted in a gradual weight gain and an unhealthy body. I had become ungainly.

I had taken up working out on again off again since then but had not been able to completely shed off the unhealthy fat since then. Today, I work out regularly and am more conscious of the nutrition that goes along with it.

Some of my personal learnings on this fitness journey were as follows:

A healthy lifestyle is a journey and not a destination

As cliched as this sounds, it is true! As I would resolve to work out, it would always result in one of two scenarios either I would work out 6 days a week for several weeks or not workout at all, dreading the physical toil which resulted in giving up working out altogether. As the author James Clear says in his wonderful book 'Atomic Habits' ;' The all-or-nothing cycle of behavior change is just one pitfall that can derail your habits'.

Eventually I started to think of a workout more in terms of a sustained habit rather than a path to an end goal. I began with workouts 2 or 3 days in a week and resolved to maintain this till I am able to take it up to 4 days a week. I have successfully sustained this habit overtime and have made it a part of my routine. I have mainly been doing weight training but plan to add another day and swap one of the above four days to playing a sport regularly.

Sustainable Nutrition is key

Eating unhealthy food if you are working out is like taking one step forward and two steps back. But I had realized overtime that measured-macros-eating was something that I will never be able to sustain as would be the case with most of you. Again, like workouts, consistency is key in nutrition and so I started with gradual changes in my diet like giving up junk food to only once a week and increased intake of protein through various sources for all meals of the day. These small changes in the diet have evolved to a habit of eating only one cheat meal in a week with a fairly balanced protein-heavy diet. This for me has been more sustainable on a daily basis than a strict measured macros based diet.

Don't measure your changes initially and then never maybe?!

For a large number of folks, the initial period of working out will never show any change, apart from the daily pain your body might experience from the workouts. Measuring or expecting changes here might mean a death wish for your habit even before it has taken root in your daily life.

Unless it is directly related to your profession, staying fit should be the eventual goal of working out rather than a heavy bias towards making your body attractive. Yes, everyone wants to look good specially when it seems like you are sacrificing so much. But herein lies the key, it shouldn't feel like sacrificing once you make it a part of your life and looking good physically should be a happy by product of a healthy lifestyle.!

These were some of my personal experiences and learnings that have made me better and fitter but you can experiment with your own habits, schedule, exercise types and nutrition that you will be more inclined to sustain over time. Yo do you!

17th October, 2021

I returned to India towards the end of 2016 from the US post my Masters degree and work experience of over a year in the bay area. I had always wanted to venture out and build something of my own, but was clueless to the direction I would have to take for this. After taking a break of almost 1.5 years, trying to figure things out personally and exploring some potential opportunities in startups that came to me, I toyed with the idea of starting a D2C brand. Whilst trying to get this off the ground over the next 1.5 years, I also started to work in the family business. My father had established this business in around 1986 and was successfully running it ever since. In his late sixties now, he had a hearing problem that had aggravated over time and needed help with running the business.

I agreed to help out but was personally not attached to the business and over the course of time realized that I was not happy working there either. I tried to convince my father to scale down the business and eventually shut shop so that he could retire. A workaholic by nature and having built this business from scratch over the years, my father did not agree to this immediately and as such this was a difficult decision for him. He eventually warmed up to the idea but did not know how he would go about it or even where he could begin. This led the responsibility of scaling it down systematically and eventually closing it on me. A major part of this process had to be done during the COVID pandemic by me alone as my father- a senior citizen, stayed home to stay safe. Working in a business setup which had evolved over the years around my father, I learnt some important lessons.

It is important to set a clear culture of expectations

The day to day running of our business did not have a structure, people did whatever came across them and seemed most urgent at a given time. There was no clear demarcation of responsibilities defined for our manager, accountant and staff. My father had not been the best delegator and would end up doing most work of relatively higher importance on his own that he should have been delegating to the employees he had hired for this very purpose. This micromanagement style of my father had also prevented the employees to step up and take increased responsibility of their work. The absence of a basic structure of ownership of tasks and a general lack of productivity on the part of the employees led me to laying down new efficient processes to be followed with an emphasis on increased accountability. All of this resulted in palpable discomfort to the employees as this would be a significant shift for them from the casual and lax working style that had evolved over the years with my father's relaxed management style and of not seeking accountability even for repeated mistakes and lack of oversight. The friction between me and the employees at our business was perceptible in the absence of my father.

I started to chip at this hardened behavior by setting basic expectations for them, starting with punctuality in arriving at work. I would promptly call the employee who wasn't punctual and hadn't informed ahead of time about being late. This habit in due course led them to being punctual or else being diligent in informing me before hand about getting late to work along with stating the associated reason. Other elementary habits that I managed to instill into them were: jotting down incomplete tasks during the day and attending to these on a priority basis the next day, creating a schedule and following up with clients on a timely basis and making clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities amongst other things. All of this was a gradual process but led to increased productivity and better communication. At least some of this new behavior came to be internalized by the employees thus lowering the reluctance they initially faced. Noticeable behavior change of increased accountability in one employee would result in a ripple effect and spread to others.

The lesson I learnt from this experience was just how important setting expectations of productivity, accountability at the very outset and thus defining a culture of individual ownership was at contributing to the efficient working and structure of any business.

It is important for a small business to focus on upskilling employees

The 'comfort zone' for all of us is that dreaded place, in hindsight, where we ought not to be but where we largely end up thanks to the very nature of humans evolved over time in seeking safety and comfort. At the business, I would try to actively give the employees more responsibility that would require them to either learn something new or deal with an uncomfortable novel situation. The reluctance from them to this would come in the form of asking endless questions about this new task, some relevant but several other very trivial ones that could easily be figured out by applying basic logic. I would patiently answer all of them as I could sense that this was coming from a place of fear, the fear of encountering something unfamiliar and uncomfortable. They would, in due course, complete the task begrudgingly. Even after pointing specifically to how the learning from having completed the task, had added to the person's skills and added to their experience , this was something that would never come naturally to them. Nonetheless, the constant persistence from my side did result in increased work efficiency and at least a perception of increased work satisfaction on their part, after having successfully completed a new task or responsibility.

The lesson here was that upskilling employees should be a crucial part of running every business. It not only leads to the growth of the employee but also improves the efficiency and thus growth of the business and most importantly betters the future prospects of both the business and its employees.

The entire experience made me realize that running a small family business could also be a place of immense learning of practical management lessons on things like culture, employee and resource management that predominantly find mention and application in the context of big companies and high growth startups.

9th January 2022

I recently read the famed classic self-help book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' by Dale Carnegie. The book is filled with little gems of wisdom on how taking a different approach to situations, that may not be working in your favor, leads to favorable and sometimes surprising outcomes in your professional and personal life. How this 'different' and sometimes unintuitive approach can yield results or clear a blockade appears nothing short of magic but when broken down from a psychological and behavior perspective makes much more innate sense. Reading the book reminded me of two such experiences of my own where taking a deliberate non-instinctive approach in the moment had yielded favorable results for me. Again, these are from my small day-to-day experiences with people outside of work but are insightful nonetheless.

Broken spectacles and an unruly manager

I used to wear spectacles during my engineering days and these would typically be bought at the local optician shop. The quality of these were not great and were prone to seldom breaking of the lenses and frame. With the intention of buying a better pair that would last longer, I bought a branded pair that were almost twice the price of the ones that I was used to buying. The price of the specs had an inbuilt 'insurance' that was basically a guarantee to replace the entire pair in case of breakage. On the day of buying the specs the printer in the store was not working and the manager sent me an email instead with details saying that I could collect the printed invoice and other documents at a later date. Like most people I did not bother to go back and collect these from the store.

After about 6-7 months the frame of the glasses broke. I went to the store where I was told by the manager that the frame could not be repaired and would not be replaced. I reminded him of the 'insurance' that the glasses came with but he dismissed it saying that it only applied to the glass lenses and not to the frame but this was not the case in reality. Heated arguments with him yielded no results, he stuck to his stubborn stance and demanded that I show him the insurance documents along with the invoice. Since I did not have these and never bothered to get it from the store, the manager saw this as an excuse and claimed that nothing would be done anyways. Feeling dejected, I left the store fuming at the unruly behavior of the manager.

After about a week, I went back to the store only this time, I decided to take a different approach instead of butting heads with the manager directly. I went to the billing counter and demanded the invoice and other insurance related documents showing them the email that I had found in my inbox by now. I did not bring up the broken pair of specs at all. My thinking was that having these documents with me would give me better leverage to make my case. The employee printed these out for me and I asked him the details of the 'insurance' that came with the product. In the flow of good customer service ; that is typical only when the customer is buying a product and not seen when he is complaining for a repair ; he listed out all the conditions under which the pair would be replaced which included the broken frame condition as well. I had not spoken a thing of the broken pair that was sitting in my bag up to this point. I singled out and repeated specifically the broken frame condition along with its validity and cross-checked with him that this was covered for replacement with no added conditions. He answered in the affirmative at which point, I calmly took out the broken pair from my bag and showed it to him. For a moment he was surprised at this and having confirmed just a minute ago that this was covered, he took it to his manager and filled him in on the details of our conversation. With no excuse to hide behind now, they replaced the entire pair.

The contrast between the two approaches and the results were clear. On the first approach, I took the instinctive confrontational approach with the manager in a heated argument with no favorable outcome while in the second I approached the situation in a deliberate calm manner from a point of leverage and non-confrontational attitude and it worked incredibly in my favor.

Family vacation crisis

A few years back, I had planned a family vacation to Kerala for a few days. My family was excited for it as we rarely took long vacations together. I planned the entire itinerary and made reservations for hotels and accommodations. The one thing that I could not reserve was the taxi for the entire trip due to unavailability and a general lack of transparency online or through phone calls to make this reservation before hand. I figured that it might be easier to get to Kerala and then just make a booking from there. We were all set.

We reached Kerala airport and found out that people generally pre-book an airport-to-airport taxi for travel in Kerala and this was by far the most convenient and economical option. The taxi picks you up at the airport when you arrive, takes you to your hotel and all the sightseeing, touristy places around Kerala for the duration of your vacation and then drops you back to the airport for your departure. We did not have this taxi and I was traveling with old parents which becomes a bit difficult if you do not have everything sorted before hand. Couple this with the general impatience and lack of trust of my parents, I found myself in a soup right at the beginning of the vacation. Although we got to our hotel easily through a pre-paid taxi from the airport what I did not prepare for was for the difficulty in getting a taxi at a short notice for the rest of the travel during the vacation. We had reached our hotel in the evening and I found myself on the phone continuously from that point on scrambling to arrange for a taxi to begin travel from the next morning. I made several calls that evening and night but to no avail. Finally after a couple of hours, I found a certain Mr. Francis who tried to contact his network of taxi-drivers to arrange for something. He couldn't arrange a confirmation with someone right then but promised that he would definitely find someone by next morning and that I need not make calls to anyone else at this point. I took Mr. Francis on his word and went to sleep trusting that he would find someone.

The next morning I did not receive any calls or messages from Mr. Francis by the time we got ready for breakfast. Desperate, I called him for the confirmation of a taxi starting today as he had promised. Mr. Francis picked up and in an unapologetic tone said that he could not arrange anyone. I was furious at him and also partly on myself since I had trusted him blindly and did not make any more calls after he assured me. During this moment, I was sitting with my family for breakfast and as much I wanted to shout at this man from the top of my voice for putting me in this situation, I did not want to upset my family at breakfast and start the vacation on a bad note. I controlled my anger and instead just accepted the situation. As if testing my patience, and not sensing my seething anger, he asked me what I was going to do now in what sounded like a somewhat apathetic manner. I was filled with rage again but managed to control it again realizing that nothing good might come out of expressing it, I shrugged it off and replied that I will just continue to contact other people now and hung up. Having lost hope and after calling a few other people unsuccessfully, after sometime I received a call from Mr. Francis saying that he had arranged for a taxi exactly according to my requirement. The taxi had been successfully arranged, the driver was very professional and courteous and the rest of the vacation went really smooth.

At the end of the vacation, while leaving on the final day from the airport, I gave a courtesy call to Mr. Francis to thank him for arranging the taxi. It was during this call that Mr. Francis mentioned the reason he went above and beyond to arrange a taxi for me even after he thought he had exhausted his resources after our disappointing conversation during breakfast in the hotel. He said that he had anticipated a confrontation from me during that phone conversation and had somewhat mentally prepared for it but I had not reacted angrily and had talked with him in a calm manner. This seemingly unexpected behavior on my part made him reciprocate by going the extra mile than he normally would to make this arrangement.

The experiences show that sometimes suppressing the natural reaction-based approach in the moment and making a tiny behavioral change can lead to very favorable results. The book 'How to win friends and influence people' is filled with these types of stories from people. I would highly recommend the book to everyone and would recommend applying these techniques in your personal lives to observe these surprisingly favorable results for yourself.